Eton Scholarship Papers

I sat a whole bunch of these when I was 11 and 12 in preparation for my own scholarship exams somewhere else (which I failed with flying colours). They were generally speaking bloody hard (the French paper included colloquialisms that had gone out of fashion in the 1950s). But by far the most fun was the General Paper. This didn't require any revision or prior knowledge - pretty much everything you needed for the answer was provided in the question - but it did require that you think.

Everyone has got themself into a bit of a tizzy about a paper from a couple of years ago that started off with the famous section from The Prince by Nicolo Macchiavelli ("it is better to be feared than loved" etc), and then went on to ask the following questions:

a) Summarise the argument in the passage (5)
b) Explain to what extent you find the argument unappealing (5)
c) The year is 2040. There have been riots in the streets of London after Britain has run out of petrol because of an oil crisis in the Middle East. Protesters have attacked public buildings. Several policemen have died. Consequently, the Government has deployed the Army to curb the protests. After two days the protests have been stopped but twenty-five protesters have been killed by the Army. You are the Prime Minister. Write the script for a speech to be broadcast to the nation in which you explain why employing the Army against violent protesters was the only option available to you and one which was both necessary and moral. (15)

Laurie Penny has dashed off a typically overwrought piece saying that this is typical of the way that the elite is taught to think and that if she were answering this now she'd write ‘go fuck yourself’ across the paper in my sparkliest pens. And so on and so on. Because clearly this is all an extended part of indoctrination that only Etonians can ever be Prime Minister (because there's been, ooh, one in the last 40 years).

And this is obviously bollocks. It's an intellectual challenge designed to show how well the examinee has understood the passage, and whether he is able to apply it to a contemporary scenario. In one of Laurie's tweets she gasps that this par for the course - that "in debating clubs I often saw people trained to defend the indefensible". You don't fucking say. Arguing both sides of a point (and the question above first asks the student to point out why Macchiavelli's argument is unpleasant - it's worth fewer marks because it's a much easier question) is a fundamental part of learning how to debate. And that in itself is a key to becoming more - not less - broad-minded. If you can't bring yourself ever to see an opponent's point of view you become calcified in your own opinions and inclined to dismiss all opposition as inherently evil. If you can't argue the opposite, you can't properly understand your own position.

She also sniffs that The significant line in that extended question is ‘You are the Prime Minister.’ As if you’d be anything else. Question 4 envisages the examinee as a hotel handyman. As if you'd be anything else. If you can't imagine any other school asking questions like this (and some do by the way - the Eton scholarship paper is prety much the same as for the other top schools) then it's because you can't imagine a school exam for 12 year olds asking them to read and apply philosophy. And that's not Eton's fault.

Mr Grumpy

I'm late to this, but Michael Gove's speech on "what it means to be an educated person" was really rather good. There aren't many politicians whose speeches can actually be read for pleasure, but Gove's always repay attention.

The extent to which Gove attracts hatred and loathing from the left is really quite remarkable - a testament probably to the extent to which his reforms are actually working. Even so, the response to the most news-y bit of the speech has been extraordinary.

One set of history teaching resources targeted at year 11s – 15 and 16 year olds – suggests spending classroom time depicting the rise of Hitler as a ‘Mr Men’ story.

If I may quote – “The following steps are a useful framework: Brainstorm the key people involved (Hitler, Hindenburg, Goering, Van der Lubbe, Rohm…). Discuss their personalities / actions in relation to the topic. Bring up a picture of the Mr Men characters on the board. Discuss which characters are the best match.”

I may be unfamiliar with all of Roger Hargreaves' work but I am not sure he ever got round to producing Mr Anti-Semitic Dictator, Mr Junker General or Mr Dutch Communist Scapegoat.

Aggrieved educationalists were split into two camps: those who argued that no-one would really teach like this, and that this was irresponsible sensationalism; and those who argued that this was a perfectly good way to teach, and that this was irresponsible anti-educationalism. The inventor of the approach sets the record straight here:

The activity actually starts with the following discussion point: "If the Weimar Republic was a Mr. Men character, which one would it be and why?". With a projected image of the characters on the screen it produces some interesting answers - for example "Mr. Worry" (inability and unwillingness to take firm action against the Nazis) to "Mr. Bounce" (the dramatic 'recovery' of 1924-28) and "Mr. Mean" (refusing to increase unemployment benefits after 1929 with disastrous results). Similarly, those students who regard Hitler’s speechmaking skills and charisma as the key to his rise to power will choose a different character to represent the Nazi leader compared to those who focus on his ability to merely capitalise upon the Weimar Republic’s weaknesses or those who blame the impact of the Great Depression - and so on.

I'm not sure this helps much. Reducing a polity to a single human characteristic is simply vacuous. Children's books can carry a wealth of ambiguity and sophisticated characterisation. Infants' books (and that's what the Mr Men series are - my 4 year old loves them, but if she's still a regular reader at 10 I'm going to be concerned) cannot. Reducing a complex historical period to a one-dimensional anthropomorphised emotion is actively unhistorical. What on earth are you supposed to learn by calling Hitler Mr Grumpy?

Bad reasons to stay in the EU

I've flirted with the Better Off Out position, but as it stands I'm pretty undecided which way I'd fall in an in or out referendum. Nigel Lawson's magnum opus seemed to me to be a bit sketchy on the practical economic implications of exit, while Portillo barely touched on it. On the other hand, the arguments currently being mustered against exit are even worse. Take Polly Toynbee today. Leaving to one side her argument that there should be no referendum on Europe because it is so deeply unpopular with the European people, she focuses on the economic dangers of exit.

But reasons to stay are blindingly clear. US banks and financiers only stay in the City as a gateway to the EU. Japanese car-makers are only here to trade in the EU. President Obama sent an envoy to warn Cameron that a "bridge" to the US was useless if the UK were outside the EU. Cameron presides over the G8 soon, where a long needed EU-US trade deal will bring tariffs tumbling: the UK alone can never win such a deal.

So, there are four factors given there: US banks are only in the City to facilitate trading with the EU; foreign manufacturers are only in the UK to sell cars in the EU; the US/UK relationship depends on EU membership; and the UK would be unable to negotiate free trade deals on its own. I'm not sure that any ring true.

The first is perhaps least convincing. For a start, US banks and financiers have been present in the City since before the EC was founded, let alone since before the UK joined. Equally, the City is very far from confined to working with or in Europe - the City is a global financial centre, and much of its work is focused on the Far East, and other rising economies. As to the argument that it would be impossible to retain a position as a financial centre when located proximate to but separate from a greater trading bloc, I can think of two pretty clear examples of why that isn't true: Singapore and Hong Kong (especially before '97, but it remains outside the Chinese system).

The second at least has some foundation - car makers have said that a British exit would be bad for business. The difficulty is that the same predictions were made for British industry and FDI if Britain remained outside the Euro. Yet in 2007 (before the financial crash, which devestated global FDI trends) the UK was the world's third largest recipient of FDI, a fivefold increase on 2000. Repeated warnings that fail to materialise inevitable diminish in credibility.

The third is largely a diplomatic point: the UK would be a diminished power if no longer part of a greater bloc. This has superficial logic, but think of this: the UK has a larger economy than Russia, a larger and more effective army and greater ability to project force across the world. Yet which nation receives more diplomatic attention from the US? Russia, largely because the UK is considered as a part of a wider bloc (and a bloc with very limited hard power potential) and its individual importance is diminished accordingly. I think it's at least arguable that Britain would have more clout outside the EU, and not less.

The last point - that an 'independent' Britain would be unable to negotiate free trade agreements with trading partners, and the US in particular, is something of a doozy. What do the following countries have in common? Jordan, Australia, South Korea, Colombia, Peru, Oman, Morrocco, Singapore, Chile, Bahrain, Mexico, Canada and Israel? Free trade agreements with the US. Others are being negotiated with (among others) Ghana, Kuwait, Mozambique, Indonesia and Kenya. Is Polly seriously suggesting that the UK has less financial and diplomatic heft than Ghana?

And then there's this:


Trading with the EU from outside means obeying every rule with no seat at the rule-making table.

So, does this mean that the US has just signed up to obeying every EU rule in order to trade with it? The hell it does. Oliver Kamm had a more sophisticated version of this argument when he said (in response to Lord Lawson):

But note that Norway, whom UKIP cite as a possible model, does contribute to the EU budget and accepts almost all EU regulations. It does so because it wants access to the Single Market.

But Norway runs a thumping trade surplus with the European Union - it's position is that much weaker because it needs to sell things to the EU. The UK runs a substantial trade deficit with the EU - we buy things from it (indeed, even though ostensibly a bare majority of UK export goods go to the EU, this is distorted by the Antwerp/Rotterdam effect - in reality, the EU is not the destination for most UK exports). The bargaining positions are not equivalent.

I think that in/out is the only referendum that the pro-EU side have a chance of winning in the UK. But the arguments are going to have to be an awful lot better than this.

Austerity bites

I'm not an economist, as I've mentioned once or twice before. As a result, I sometimes struggle to understand even the terms of the debate. Paul Krugman, and now the IMF, clearly believe that UK austerity is hurting the economy, and should be replaced by a policy of substantial fiscal stimulus. I can understand the logic behind this - if consumption is down, then Government spending can replace it. Since GDP = C+I+G+(X-M), there's a certain mathematical simplicity about this that I understand.

Where I struggle though is at a more macro level. Apart from consumption (which I think can be at least partly explained by the fact that people are trying to deleverage their enormous household debts) the sluggish GDP growth can be put down to three principal causes: diminished production of North Sea oil and gas; depressed activity in the financial sector, and huge falls in construction.

These are all principally supply-side problems, and demand-side measures (like fiscal policy) aren't really going to sort them out. By way of illustration - there's no shortage of demand for houses in most of the UK. Problems in the construction sector must therefore be on the supply-side. I can envisage Government led solutions to this (planning reform, planning reform, planning reform) but I don't really see that an increased deficit is the most efficient way to deal with it.

Similarly with the financial sector, much of the fall in activity has been the equivalent of blowing the froth of a cappuccino. As such it's a decline in illusory production (and has indeed been partly policy-led). This surely isn't a failure than needs to be (or could be) corrected by greater public spending.

As to oil and gas - much of the fall in production is the inevitable result of an ageing oil field with diminishing reserves. More is the result of catastrophically short-sighted tax policies initiated by Gordon Brown and exacerbated by George Osborne (marginal tax rates on some fields are now as high as 81%). When you tax something, you get less of it. When you tax something punitively, you get much less of it. Here at least is a candidate for Government intervention, if only by cutting rates.

However, for all three sectors, there are signs of good times ahead. For oil and gas, capital investment is at an all time high, and production is forecast to start rising again. For the financial sector, the recapitalised banks are returning to profitability. Even construction is showing signs of stabilising. I'm not sure that any of these are really determined by fiscal policy. Austerity didn't cause their decline, and stimulus wouldn't trigger their recovery. I sometimes get the feeling that the policy battles over austerity vs stimulus are really a proxy for something else.

Blood boiling

I know that this article is in the form of a mea culpa, but there are some things for which a slightly hangdog expression is insufficient expiation.

Every time I read a headline about the measles epidemic in Wales I flinch with shame. This is because I used to be one of those people who refused to have their child vaccinated – for anything. My daughter was born in a London hospital in September 2011, and every time the doctors, the health visitors and the nurses at the weighing clinic tried to give her the routine jabs, I put her back in her pram and wheeled her away.

The NHS schedule of inoculations felt so over the top, full of diseases I'd last heard mention of in gloomy Victorian novels. Injections at two, three, four, 12 and 13 months, for diphtheria, tetanus, tuberculosis, pertussis, polio – all these archaic names, not things that you actually think your child is going to catch.

The stupidity of this is one thing - we're used to the stupidity of all these fucking hippies. It's the out and out selfishness of this approach that makes the red mist descend. Why does she think diphtheria died out? (For that matter, when? Far from being a Victorian problem, it was the third largest killer of children under fifteen as late as the 1930s). And also, tetanus? That really hasn't gone anywhere, adults need a ten year booster vaccine to maintain immunity.

My children (both fully immunised, MMR and all) rely on the community immunity that you get when children are all immunised (i.e. their parents aren't drivelling fucking simpletons in gypsy skirts knitting their own muesli). So when I hear this:

The fact is, I still have a hunch that puts me off vaccinations, a hunch that I can't explain. I just feel funny about them.

funny isn't what I feel. Furious maybe, but not funny.

University Challenged

Apparently Manchester University are about to be sneered at in the semi-finals of University Challenge. They also have a pretty strong record in recent years. But there's something in this puffery in the Guardian that doesn't appear to have been mentioned:

Beating Oxbridge is particularly gratifying, admits Tristan Burke, captain of Manchester's 2012 victorious team, which triumphed over Cambridge's Pembroke College in the final after seeing off four other Oxbridge colleges in the knockout stages. "University Challenge is where the majority of people get their impressions of universities from. You still see that sketch from the Young Ones being rolled out. Generally there is this ingrained idea that Oxford and Cambridge are in some way educationally superior to the red-brick universities. So from a political, education-policy point of view, there is a certain satisfaction in proving that wrong."

In this year's first round, Manchester University beat Lincoln College, Oxford by 5 points. Lincoln College has 300 undergraduates and 200 postgraduates. Manchester University? 28,500 undergraduates and 11,000 postgraduates. Well done and all that, but if this is a story of David and Goliath, I think Mr Burke has the parties confused...

#Notnews on party funding!

Left Foot Forward has the shocking news (from the Sunday Times) that most large private political donations are to the Tories.

Forty three of the 50 biggest political donations made by individuals last year went to the Conservative Party, according to the annual Sunday Times Rich List (£). Seven out of the top ten political donors also gave to the Conservative Party.

The largest donor is Michael Farmer, who gave the Tories £1.3m (although this is four times as much as the next largest). Labour only have two large private donors, Lord Sainsbury and Andrew Rosenfeld. Obvious proof that the Tories have an unacceptably narrow funding source.

In unrelated news, the Trade Unions have given more than £20m to Labour since 2010, with Unite alone having given more than the top 50 Tory donors combined.

I am right; you are evil

'Never hate your enemies,' Michael Corleone advised, 'it affects your judgement.' In politics this holds true (although always remember that in politics your opponents are on the other side; your enemies are generally behind you).

Via Tim, David Friedman has written a very interesting piece about what the important dividing line should be in politics: not whose side am I on; but what is the right answer. David's politics are 'purer' than mine. He espouses an "extreme version of free market capitalism", and has been debating with both 'pure' libertarians like Murray Rothbard and Marxist anarchists like Robert Wolff. Friedman found that both classified the world into good and evil men, although each would disagree about which side was which.

I have made this point before myself in the context of British politics:

Weighting your arguments on the basis that your opponents are wicked sub-human scum is intellectually sterile. Why bother assessing the actual merits of anything? We are right because we are good; you are wrong because you are bad. It's a standard of political analysis that would shame a three year old. Worse than that, it's a line of argument with seriously dodgy antecedents. Maybe Charlie should take a little look at the sort of people that label their political opponents cockroaches or rats and consider whether he thinks this is the sort of thing he's proud of doing.

It's always better to ascribe good faith to your opponents and be disappointed if needs be. Life is sufficiently complicated to support more than one theory, without all the others being evil.

School Days

As so often with these things, I am totally out of touch with modern Britain. My first reaction, on seeing Michael Gove's proposal to lengthen the school day, so that instead of ending at 3pm it ends at 4.30pm was surprise that it was so short at the moment. The reason for this is also why I'm not sure what the hell Christine Blower is on about either:

"Independent schools in England and Wales, which often break for two weeks more during the summer and have longer holidays at other times of the year than their state counterparts, do not apparently feel the need to change and are apparently not suffering from their reduced hours."

My schoolday pretty much throughout my education started at between 8.15 and 8.30 and went on until 6. That sort of timetable allowed a lot of time for sport/extra-curricular activities as well - between 2 and 4 hours a day at secondary school. An extra three hours a day for eleven years adds up to an awful lot more education...

UPDATE: Recusant makes the point in the comments that his (and my) schools also taught on Saturday mornings (I'll leave out the sport in the afternoons, because they were only for children in the school teams). Remarkably, this means that private school weeks are effectively three days longer than state school weeks. I wonder just how much of the gap in educational attainment is explained by that?

Politics in black and white

I've been meaning to write this post since last week, when everyone on Twitter simultaneously told me to read Caitlin Moran's article on why hating Thatcher was understandable. The basis for it is that Caitlin grew up on benefits in Wolverhampton, a town devastated by Thatcherism and the unemployment that it brought. For people in that environment, Thatcher brought nothing but ruin.

We can leave to one side the fact that of Wolverhampton's three constituencies, two voted for Mrs Thatcher. Caitlin is clearly talking about the third: Bilston/Wolverhampton South East.

We would drive into town, and my father would start the same, rattled monologue: “When I was a kid, at this time of the day, all you’d hear was the tramp, tramp, tramp of people’s feet as they walked to the factories. Every bus would be full, the streets would be seething. This town had something to do, and money in its pocket. People used to come here for work, and get it, the same day.

“Look at it now,” he’d say, as we went right through the centre: boarded up buildings, buddelia growing out of windows. “A ghost-town. Where have they gone? Where have they all gone?"

Caitlin's father was right: Wolverhampton had been a town heavily dependent on jobs in heavy industry, particularly the Bilston steelworks, and the Norton Villiers Triumph motorcycle factory. Along with coal mining and shipbuilding, the two industries that saw the greatest decline in post-war Bitain were steel and car/motorbike production. Nationalised, centralised, over-manned and under-capitalised, the story of these industries is a deeply depressing one. But here's the thing: Caitlin (and many on the left) are compressing this story down into anti-Thatcherism.

Bilston Steel Works closed on 12 April 1979. Norton Villiers Triumph closed its Wolverhampton factory in 1975 and finally went under in 1978.

The story of the British economy post-war has been the slow transformation of an industrial economy to a post-industrial economy. By the 1980s, the decline in employment in industry was a story that was at least 20 years old. If the unemployed of Wolverhampton should be shouting at anybody it is those politicians of the 1960s and 1970s who thought that they could hold back the tides of modernity by shovelling public money into moribund industry - and those that failed to create an education system capable of training a post-industrial workforce.